Thursday, 24 March 2016

I drove home today from the eye surgery in Palencia with Patrick in the seat next to mine. Patrick's eyes were closed, he couldn't see the greening landscape or the Canaletto clouds. He'd just had cortisone shot into his right eye. He's had several kinds of chemicals shot into his eyes in the last few months. None of them is helping to restore his vision.

The cortisone shots hurt more than the others, I could tell. Paddy is philosophical about his aging body. He doesn't complain very much, but it is sad, seeing the parts fall slowly off Paddy's fine old machine. He is 75 years old.
Paddy kept his eyes closed, and reached across the gear-shift, and took my hand. He kissed my knuckles.

At home the telephone rang -- Juan Carlos from Astorga, talking about the memorial tree project. The city council says Yes. Faith in Santiago, with some more good news on the same project. We will plant trees right after Easter, in a park just outside Astorga, to memorialize pilgrims who die on the Way.

The book is finished, it's being shopped around London and the Cotswolds among Paddy's literary friends; it's being read by various and sundry. I sent queries out to a couple of literary agents, but got only immediate, automated rejections. I am letting this process trickle and bubble quietly, just to see if this book is as good as I think it is, if it is good enough to catch the attention of any of the few real human publishing contacts that remain within my purview.

I am translating documents from the FICS conference that happened last weekend in Sarria. I am reflecting on the green spring days I spent walking from Sarria onward to Santiago de Compostela in the company of George Greenia, an august professor of Spain and Spanish things, and a dear old friend. He too is aging. He's retiring this year, he's getting his head around that idea.

We spoke a lot about death and dying, people who'd done it, people who were doing it, what we wanted to happen before and after we die. It was not gruesome or morbid. It was real.

Most of the people I love are a good ten years older than I am, or more. I will probably spend a lot of my life alone, after they all shuffle off this life. If asthma and allergies don't give me the drop on them.

It's fearful stuff. But I am still fit enough to walk 110 kilometers in a few days, and enjoy it. I am sharp enough to translate between two languages, at least in writing. I write very good books, even if agents don't find them worthy of their time, even if I am past the age of rich and famous. I am still well enough to take care of business.

I am important, in small ways, to the running of several enterprises, as well as several hearts. Even with so many flavors of failure and death around me, my life is full of meaning. I am wealthy beyond imagining, at least for now.

I drove into town at sundown to buy eye-drops for Paddy, and some new lettuces. Sahagun is full of people home for the holiday, parking their cars up on the sidewalks, embracing one another in the middle of the street, flinging open the pharmacy door to shout out at a passerby, "Hombre!"

On the way home the moon rose up in the northeast, a huge orange coin on the horizon. I thought of Kim and Melissa who are making the new San Anton history booklet into a work of art. I thought about Filipe in Belgium and Kathy in California, and the friends in Santiago who took me to lunch, the ones who let me stay at their house, and said they'd send my book manuscript around to their literary friends... I thought of Paddy, whose hands I hold. I thought of my dog Harry, and his dark wet eyes and fat black nose, how much he loves me.

Like a big fat moon, it all is so temporary. We'll all be gone soon. But it all was so beautiful I just laughed out loud, right there in the car, alone.

Tuesday, 1 March 2016

Time stands
still around here, especially in winter. That’s why I try to keep at least one
long-term project going all through the slow months -- I need something to keep me alive!

I work long hours, but it doesn’t feel like I am
achieving much. It’s a lot like walking across the Meseta – you’re
walking forever and you never arrive anywhere. Like a treadmill. The scenery doesn’t change, but you sure can
tire yourself out.

We can go
for weeks around here without seeing a single visitor, and suddenly WHAM! The
house is packed, the phone’s ringing, the joint is jumpin.’

Writing
works the same way. It’s just a lot more solitary, and less fun to read about in a blog.

In November “Holy Year,” the memoir about Peaceable life, a
book I’ve been writing for years, really shifted into gear. I finished the
draft at the end of that month.

In December I researched and co-wrote (with
Scottish-American author and San Anton hospitalero Robert Mullen) “San Anton:
A History of the Mystery,” a fundraiser booklet for the albergue in
Castrojeriz.

In January
I re-wrote both of them. (Any book worth its salt needs to be
rewritten and severely edited at least once.) I had a couple of trusted people
read the manuscripts and tell me if and how and if they worked. I also sent “The
Moorish Whore,” my first novel, to be professionally translated into Spanish,
to give that book a new lease on life.

And now, as
February winds up, all the birds are flying home to roost.

“Holy Year”
is finished.

“San Anton”
is gone on to the graphics department. Kim is making it beautiful. Melissa
West, printmaker extraordinaire, might do the artwork. It will be the first
English-language document of its kind, and any money it makes will buy food for the
pilgrims who stay at Albergue Convento San Anton this summer. (You can help offset the up-front costs by donating via the PayPal button above.)

Paddy and I
are going over “Holy Year” together, word by word. I am reading it aloud to
him, because his eyesight has gone back to bad again, and because reading aloud
is a superb way to hear the rhythm, or lack of it, in a piece of writing.

I am happy
with several parts of “Holy Year.” A couple of more parts still need some
hashing-out. And once a real editor gets hold of it, I may have to rewrite the
whole thing at least once more!

It is not a
Camino book. It is much broader than that. It’s along the lines of “Driving
Over Lemons” or “A Year in Provence,” but it’s set along the Camino. Yes, there
are tons of pilgrims in there -- It’s a story of what happened here in 2010,
the last year we still cared for all the pilgrims who passed through Moratinos.
I describe pilgrims and the pilgrimage, and dogs, but I also delve deep into
village life, too – how we came to be here, how things changed. It’s funny and
thought-provoking and very sad, too. And it has a lovely ending, very
redemptive.

I just need
to find a publisher for it. I may be a professional writer with a successful
novel and decades of experience behind me, but I might as well be a raw amateur
where that part of the process is concerned. I feel I am staring down a long,
black tunnel.

Maybe that
will be the next long, silent project, after all this rush and noise dies
down? (If you are a book agent, or a
publisher, or you know one of those, do get in touch. I want to make you very
happy!)

I didn’t
mind publishing “The Moorish Whore” myself, it was a first novel. But “Holy
Year” is in another class. It deserves the full professional treatment.

I feel a
lot more hopeful about finding a home for “El Capricho del Rey,” even though I’ll
be dealing in a second language, in a publishing environment I know nothing
about. Spain is a smaller country, it loves historical fiction, and the book’s
already sold thousands of copies in English. The translation work’s already
been done for them. And I know a couple
of people…

I know this
is all pretty dull reading, and I apologize. I want you
faithful Blog readers to know where all my energy’s been going, and where it
will be going in the future.

Books, and
San Anton, and another big FICS camino project that’s still very hush-hush.

And my
dogs, of course. And the Asociacion Cultural – we are planting flowers all over
town, starting with Holy Week.

Feed A Pilgrim Today!

my first novel: available now!

About Me

Rebekah Scott, an erstwhile USA newspaper journalist, pulled up stakes in June 2006 and moved with Paddy, her wise-ass English husband to The Peaceable Kingdom, a farmhouse in Moratinos, a rural pueblo in Palencia, Spain. Moratinos is on the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route now popular with hikers and bikers and riders of all beliefs and stripes and types, and The Peaceable is a stopping-place for these wanderers. This is an account of their adventures.